The Trustees warmly thank the many Friends who came together for The Friends' Weekend on Saturday and Sunday 11th-12th May 2019.

At the Friends' Annual General Meeting the retirement of Erica Dineen as one of the longest-standing Trustees was accepted, with very much regret for her departure. With characteristic concern and forethought, her role as Treasurer had been smoothly transferred to Diana Pearce over the preceding year, but the Trustees and other Friends are aware that her many other services to the Friends' community and her experienced involvement in the Trustees' deliberations and initiatives will be greatly missed.

The Chairman reported that Dr Farrell Burnett had accepted the Trustees' invitation and nomination to election as a Trustee in the vacancy created. Dr Burnett is a member of the editorial committee of The Ryedale Historian and was for a number of years, and until recently, Editor of that respected journal. The meeting voted approval of Dr Burnett's appointment to Trusteeship, nem. con. Five Trustees were standing down according to the constitutional rota. All were willing to stand for another term of office and - there being no other nominations submitted - Professor S. A. J. Bradley, Mrs Heather Harris, Mrs Diana Pearce and Mrs Margery Roberts were all unanimously elected for a further term. The Chairman's report on the AGM 2019 will be sent out to all members in due course.

The Kirkdale Lecture, entitled 'The rise of popular churchyard commemoration: the Ryedale experience in its national and international context' was then given byProfessor Harold Mytum, of Liverpool University. This interesting presentation, well illustrated and including discussion of a number of gravestones from Kirkdale, will be issued as a publication in the Kirkdale Monograph Series. Professor Mytum has kindly offered to lead an informal illustrative walk around graves at St Gregory's Minster later in the summer. Friends will be notified of details when these are fixed.

St Gregory's Minster - looking at its very best on a morning of glorious early-summer sunshine - was filled for the Morning Service of Commemoration of Founders & Benefactors, when the now-traditional Litany of Remembrance was read, with moving effect for its meditation upon the community of friends of Kirkdale over many centuries past, in whose tradition and spirit the contemporary Friends of St Gregory's Minster continue to care for this ancient centre of Kirkdale community. The Guest Preacher was The Very Revd Archdeacon Richard Martin of False Bay, South Africa - himself long established as a friend of the Kirkdale churches and the Kirkdale community.

Afterwards, some thirty Friends and guests enjoyed the Friends' Luncheon at the Kirkbymoorside Golf Club.

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SOME SPECIAL COMMEMORATIONS

St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne Romanesque wall-painting in the Galilee Chapel in Durham Cathedral

The Feast Day of Gregory the Great, Kirkdale's Patron, is September 3rd.

The Feast Day of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne is March 20th.

October is the month for commemoration of a little cluster of worthies of relevance to the early (Anglo-Saxon) Northumbrian Church and the first centuries of St Gregory's Minster.

On 10 October the Church commemorates Paulinus, the bishop who led the Christian mission from Canterbury to York in 627. On 11 October Ethelburga is remembered - the already baptised queen of king Edwin who, urged by Pope Boniface, assisted Paulinus in Edwin’s conversion. On 12 October remembrance is made of Wilfrid, bishop of York and builder of Ripon and Hexham churches, the ancient crypts of which still survive and can be viewed.

On 13 October the Church honours the king whose name appears in the Anglo-Saxon inscription on Kirkdale’s ancient sundial. It was in Eadward dagum cyning - ‘in the days of king Edward’ - that Orm Gamalson rebuilt the ruined St Gregory’s Minster. This king Edward was Edward the Confessor (died 1066) who founded Westminster Abbey.